The Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) yesterday (22 November) rejected the assertion made by Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Eric Pickles, that it has been pressuring UK councils into cutting waste collection services.
The statement comes as a reaction to a piece written by Pickles in the Daily Mail, yesterday (22 November), in which Pickles threatened to cut council funding if local authorities did not revert to weekly collections of residual waste. In the article, Pickles accused WRAP, ‘the Government’s bin quango’, of telling ‘councils to make the cuts after local elections - to avoid democratic opposition’.
‘Fortnightly collections weren’t a local choice - Labour politicians and Whitehall pen-pushers cajoled and bullied councils into cutting collections’, Pickles continued.
However, in a blog running on WRAP’s website, CEO of WRAP, Liz Goodwin wrote: ‘WRAP has been wrongly accused of trying to force or bully local councils into dropping collections and cutting services. This is not how we work and it has never happened. We offer optional advice, based on many years’ experience of good practice, which councils have been free to accept or reject.’
Goodwin went on to note that ‘collections advice to local councils is a very small part of what we do at WRAP, accounting for around just 4.5 per cent of our Defra [Department of Food and Rural Affairs] funding.’
‘Schemes imposed on residents, not taking account of their views, or winning their buy in rarely work. We have never advocated an imposed approach’, Goodwin continued.
‘We are funded in our work not just by Defra, but also by the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Ireland Governments whose support has increased considerably in recent years, now accounting for a considerable proportion of our income.’
However, in the same blog, WRAP said that they were pleased with the conditions of the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) Weekly Collection Support Scheme fund, that saw 90 projects from 85 councils secure funding to support weekly collections of waste and other recycling schemes.
In reaction to the DCLG announcement, Goodwin wrote that she was ‘very pleased that the conditions of the DCLG fund… made it clear it was looking for schemes which improved recycling or had wider environmental benefits.’
‘It is good to see that funds are being channelled to a range of schemes which encourage greater recycling, including ones which support the introduction of weekly food waste collections. WRAP’s clear view that we have repeated consistently for many years, is that food waste should be collected weekly and should not end up in the tip.’
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